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		<title>II</title>
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		<section id="chapter-2" epub:type="chapter">
			<h2>SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE</h2>
<p>
That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre spirits and
sat down to dinner without relish. It was his custom of a Sunday, when this
meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of some dry divinity on his
reading desk, until the clock of the neighbouring church rang out the hour of
twelve, when he would go soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night however,
as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his
business room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private part of it
a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll’s Will and sat down
with a clouded brow to study its contents. The will was holograph, for Mr.
Utterson though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend
the least assistance in the making of it; it provided not only that, in case of
the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc., all his
possessions were to pass into the hands of his “friend and benefactor
Edward Hyde,” but that in case of Dr. Jekyll’s “disappearance
or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months,”
the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll’s shoes
without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation beyond the
payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor’s household.
This document had long been the lawyer’s eyesore. It offended him both as
a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom the
fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde that
had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. It
was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn no
more. It was worse when it began to be clothed upon with detestable attributes;
and out of the shifting, insubstantial mists that had so long baffled his eye,
there leaped up the sudden, definite presentment of a fiend.
</p>
<p>
“I thought it was madness,” he said, as he replaced the obnoxious
paper in the safe, “and now I begin to fear it is disgrace.”
</p>
<p>
With that he blew out his candle, put on a greatcoat, and set forth in the
direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine, where his friend, the
great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and received his crowding patients. “If
anyone knows, it will be Lanyon,” he had thought.
</p>
<p>
The solemn butler knew and welcomed him; he was subjected to no stage of delay,
but ushered direct from the door to the dining-room where Dr. Lanyon sat alone
over his wine. This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a
shock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner. At sight
of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with both hands.
The geniality, as was the way of the man, was somewhat theatrical to the eye;
but it reposed on genuine feeling. For these two were old friends, old mates
both at school and college, both thorough respectors of themselves and of each
other, and what does not always follow, men who thoroughly enjoyed each
other’s company.
</p>
<p>
After a little rambling talk, the lawyer led up to the subject which so
disagreeably preoccupied his mind.
</p>
<p>
“I suppose, Lanyon,” said he, “you and I must be the two
oldest friends that Henry Jekyll has?”
</p>
<p>
“I wish the friends were younger,” chuckled Dr. Lanyon. “But
I suppose we are. And what of that? I see little of him now.”
</p>
<p>
“Indeed?” said Utterson. “I thought you had a bond of common
interest.”
</p>
<p>
“We had,” was the reply. “But it is more than ten years since
Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind;
and though of course I continue to take an interest in him for old sake’s
sake, as they say, I see and I have seen devilish little of the man. Such
unscientific balderdash,” added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple,
“would have estranged Damon and Pythias.”
</p>
<p>
This little spirit of temper was somewhat of a relief to Mr. Utterson.
“They have only differed on some point of science,” he thought; and
being a man of no scientific passions (except in the matter of conveyancing),
he even added: “It is nothing worse than that!” He gave his friend
a few seconds to recover his composure, and then approached the question he had
come to put. “Did you ever come across a <i>protégé</i> of his—one
Hyde?” he asked.
</p>
<p>
“Hyde?” repeated Lanyon. “No. Never heard of him. Since my
time.”
</p>
<p>
That was the amount of information that the lawyer carried back with him to the
great, dark bed on which he tossed to and fro, until the small hours of the
morning began to grow large. It was a night of little ease to his toiling mind,
toiling in mere darkness and besieged by questions.
</p>
<p>
Six o’clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently
near to Mr. Utterson’s dwelling, and still he was digging at the problem.
Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but now his
imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in
the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room, Mr. Enfield’s
tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures. He would be aware
of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city; then of the figure of a man
walking swiftly; then of a child running from the doctor’s; and then
these met, and that human Juggernaut trod the child down and passed on
regardless of her screams. Or else he would see a room in a rich house, where
his friend lay asleep, dreaming and smiling at his dreams; and then the door of
that room would be opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the sleeper
recalled, and lo! there would stand by his side a figure to whom power was
given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bidding. The figure
in these two phases haunted the lawyer all night; and if at any time he dozed
over, it was but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, or
move the more swiftly and still the more swiftly, even to dizziness, through
wider labyrinths of lamplighted city, and at every street corner crush a child
and leave her screaming. And still the figure had no face by which he might
know it; even in his dreams, it had no face, or one that baffled him and melted
before his eyes; and thus it was that there sprang up and grew apace in the
lawyer’s mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate, curiosity to
behold the features of the real Mr. Hyde. If he could but once set eyes on him,
he thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps roll altogether away, as was
the habit of mysterious things when well examined. He might see a reason for
his friend’s strange preference or bondage (call it which you please) and
even for the startling clause of the will. At least it would be a face worth
seeing: the face of a man who was without bowels of mercy: a face which had but
to show itself to raise up, in the mind of the unimpressionable Enfield, a
spirit of enduring hatred.
</p>
<p>
From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street
of shops. In the morning before office hours, at noon when business was plenty
and time scarce, at night under the face of the fogged city moon, by all lights
and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his
chosen post.
</p>
<p>
“If he be Mr. Hyde,” he had thought, “I shall be Mr.
Seek.”
</p>
<p>
And at last his patience was rewarded. It was a fine dry night; frost in the
air; the streets as clean as a ballroom floor; the lamps, unshaken by any wind,
drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow. By ten o’clock, when the
shops were closed, the by-street was very solitary and, in spite of the low
growl of London from all round, very silent. Small sounds carried far; domestic
sounds out of the houses were clearly audible on either side of the roadway;
and the rumour of the approach of any passenger preceded him by a long time.
Mr. Utterson had been some minutes at his post, when he was aware of an odd
light footstep drawing near. In the course of his nightly patrols, he had long
grown accustomed to the quaint effect with which the footfalls of a single
person, while he is still a great way off, suddenly spring out distinct from
the vast hum and clatter of the city. Yet his attention had never before been
so sharply and decisively arrested; and it was with a strong, superstitious
prevision of success that he withdrew into the entry of the court.
</p>
<p>
The steps drew swiftly nearer, and swelled out suddenly louder as they turned
the end of the street. The lawyer, looking forth from the entry, could soon see
what manner of man he had to deal with. He was small and very plainly dressed
and the look of him, even at that distance, went somehow strongly against the
watcher’s inclination. But he made straight for the door, crossing the
roadway to save time; and as he came, he drew a key from his pocket like one
approaching home.
</p>
<p>
Mr. Utterson stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he passed.
“Mr. Hyde, I think?”
</p>
<p>
Mr. Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of the breath. But his fear was only
momentary; and though he did not look the lawyer in the face, he answered
coolly enough: “That is my name. What do you want?”
</p>
<p>
“I see you are going in,” returned the lawyer. “I am an old
friend of Dr. Jekyll’s—Mr. Utterson of Gaunt Street—you must
have heard of my name; and meeting you so conveniently, I thought you might
admit me.”
</p>
<p>
“You will not find Dr. Jekyll; he is from home,” replied Mr. Hyde,
blowing in the key. And then suddenly, but still without looking up, “How
did you know me?” he asked.
</p>
<p>
“On your side,” said Mr. Utterson “will you do me a
favour?”
</p>
<p>
“With pleasure,” replied the other. “What shall it be?”
</p>
<p>
“Will you let me see your face?” asked the lawyer.
</p>
<p>
Mr. Hyde appeared to hesitate, and then, as if upon some sudden reflection,
fronted about with an air of defiance; and the pair stared at each other pretty
fixedly for a few seconds. “Now I shall know you again,” said Mr.
Utterson. “It may be useful.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” returned Mr. Hyde, “It is as well we have met; and
<i>à propos</i>, you should have my address.” And he gave a number of a
street in Soho.
</p>
<p>
“Good God!” thought Mr. Utterson, “can he, too, have been
thinking of the will?” But he kept his feelings to himself and only
grunted in acknowledgment of the address.
</p>
<p>
“And now,” said the other, “how did you know me?”
</p>
<p>
“By description,” was the reply.
</p>
<p>
“Whose description?”
</p>
<p>
“We have common friends,” said Mr. Utterson.
</p>
<p>
“Common friends,” echoed Mr. Hyde, a little hoarsely. “Who
are they?”
</p>
<p>
“Jekyll, for instance,” said the lawyer.
</p>
<p>
“He never told you,” cried Mr. Hyde, with a flush of anger.
“I did not think you would have lied.”
</p>
<p>
“Come,” said Mr. Utterson, “that is not fitting
language.”
</p>
<p>
The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, with
extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the
house.
</p>
<p>
The lawyer stood awhile when Mr. Hyde had left him, the picture of disquietude.
Then he began slowly to mount the street, pausing every step or two and putting
his hand to his brow like a man in mental perplexity. The problem he was thus
debating as he walked, was one of a class that is rarely solved. Mr. Hyde was
pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable
malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer
with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a
husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him,
but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust,
loathing and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him. “There must be
something else,” said the perplexed gentleman. “There <i>is</i>
something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seems
hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story
of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires
through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for, O my
poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it
is on that of your new friend.”
</p>
<p>
Round the corner from the by-street, there was a square of ancient, handsome
houses, now for the most part decayed from their high estate and let in flats
and chambers to all sorts and conditions of men; map-engravers, architects,
shady lawyers and the agents of obscure enterprises. One house, however, second
from the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore
a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except
for the fanlight, Mr. Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed, elderly
servant opened the door.
</p>
<p>
“Is Dr. Jekyll at home, Poole?” asked the lawyer.
</p>
<p>
“I will see, Mr. Utterson,” said Poole, admitting the visitor, as
he spoke, into a large, low-roofed, comfortable hall paved with flags, warmed
(after the fashion of a country house) by a bright, open fire, and furnished
with costly cabinets of oak. “Will you wait here by the fire, sir? or
shall I give you a light in the dining-room?”
</p>
<p>
“Here, thank you,” said the lawyer, and he drew near and leaned on
the tall fender. This hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy of
his friend the doctor’s; and Utterson himself was wont to speak of it as
the pleasantest room in London. But tonight there was a shudder in his blood;
the face of Hyde sat heavy on his memory; he felt (what was rare with him) a
nausea and distaste of life; and in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed to read
a menace in the flickering of the firelight on the polished cabinets and the
uneasy starting of the shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his relief, when
Poole presently returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out.
</p>
<p>
“I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting room, Poole,” he said.
“Is that right, when Dr. Jekyll is from home?”
</p>
<p>
“Quite right, Mr. Utterson, sir,” replied the servant. “Mr.
Hyde has a key.”
</p>
<p>
“Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man,
Poole,” resumed the other musingly.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, sir, he does indeed,” said Poole. “We have all orders
to obey him.”
</p>
<p>
“I do not think I ever met Mr. Hyde?” asked Utterson.
</p>
<p>
“O, dear no, sir. He never <i>dines</i> here,” replied the butler.
“Indeed we see very little of him on this side of the house; he mostly
comes and goes by the laboratory.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, good-night, Poole.”
</p>
<p>
“Good-night, Mr. Utterson.”
</p>
<p>
And the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart. “Poor Harry
Jekyll,” he thought, “my mind misgives me he is in deep waters! He
was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God,
there is no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost of some old
sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment coming, <i>pede
claudo</i>, years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the
fault.” And the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded awhile on his own
past, groping in all the corners of memory, lest by chance some
Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light there. His past was
fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less
apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had
done, and raised up again into a sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had
come so near to doing yet avoided. And then by a return on his former subject,
he conceived a spark of hope. “This Master Hyde, if he were
studied,” thought he, “must have secrets of his own; black secrets,
by the look of him; secrets compared to which poor Jekyll’s worst would
be like sunshine. Things cannot continue as they are. It turns me cold to think
of this creature stealing like a thief to Harry’s bedside; poor Harry,
what a wakening! And the danger of it; for if this Hyde suspects the existence
of the will, he may grow impatient to inherit. Ay, I must put my shoulders to
the wheel—if Jekyll will but let me,” he added, “if Jekyll
will only let me.” For once more he saw before his mind’s eye, as
clear as transparency, the strange clauses of the will.
</p>
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